super cables

[Martin Czech]

I asked for the relevance of super clean copper cables...

I gues it is about noise...

I understand that there are 4 sources of intrinsic noise:

1.: thermal noise (can't reduce this without liquid nitrogen,
hey that's it, quit my job and build cryo-audio gear, nitrogen
cooled amps and cables, the fog makes such a good show...
;->>>, btw, we use lots of nitrogen here in the fab, as inert gas
as well as cooling for -40C measurement, the nitrogen plant is
allways covered with ice, even in the summer @ 35C)


2.:current noise (semiconductors & tubes, less carriers then metall,
thus granularity shows up, thus low noise design means large current
consumption...)

3.: shot noise (semiconductors, trapping charge, some pieces of a lot
show this current pulsing due to defects or impurities, not so important
today due to improved processes, you have to measure them out, maybe
this makes MAT devices so expensive?)

4.: excess noise or 1/f noise (this is e.g. found in carbon resistors,
it is assumed that the resistance changes from time to time, the carbon
granula change their interface, contacts like plugs can be a good source
of that, wirewound resistors have the least 1/f noise. 1/f means that the
spectral noise power density goes up when frequencys goes to zero, there
seems to be no indication for a limit, the gurus say that the on-time T
of an apparatus sets the limit, because frequencys smaller then 1/T can
not be observed then. Very clever... but makes me feel uncomfortable...



All right, this means there is all kind of intrinsic noise in the audioe
chain, but I would expect the least ammount comming from simple copper
cable. Therefore it would be  better to concentrate on proper soldering
(I don't trust into clamping) and good connectors.


m.c.